A week after his U.S. tour of sports venues, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders kept a low profile on Chargers stadium issues last week while supporters of a downtown Los Angeles stadium once again treated the spotlight like it was a cowbell and they were Christopher Walken.

Good thing for this blog post the San Diego media didn't take a cue from Sanders' silence. It was an active week for local commentary.

This San Diego CityBeat editorial kicked things off with an editorial decrying Sanders for "shilling for the Spanos family and wasting his time in flyover country—presumably because he at least has to look like he’s doing everything he can to keep the team in San Diego." Its kicker? "The Spanoses should take the poor guy off the hook and buy themselves a new building."

Or should they? Voiceofsandiego.org asked the San Diego mayoral candidates their thoughts on public subsidies for Dean Spanos and his clan, which is trying to build a new Chargers stadium in downtown San Diego. Here are what the candidates said, or didn't say as the case might be.

Union-Tribune readers also weighed in on stadium financing. The letters included here were basically all variations on a theme, this one:

"I will do my bit to save the city the absurd expense of a stadium ballot initiative by voting 'hell no' right now." -- Deborah M. Schneider of Pacific Beach

The San Diego Reader had an interesting item here. It found that in 2009 Chargers Charities gave more money to UCLA than to any other San Diego college. Hmmmm....

If you missed it, here is the podcast I did last week with Craig, Dan and Baby James at 619sports.net in which I dropped Chargers stadium knowledge and Jimmy "Super Fly" Snuka's name.

A pair of U-T columnists also added their two cents on the stadium issue.

Logan Jenkins wrote here that any new stadium proposal should be treated as a regional asset, not just a city one, ergo more than San Diego city taxpayers should pay for it. He wrote:

If it’s built with city of San Diego funds in conjunction with an expanded convention center, a stadium benefits — or, just as likely, beggars — the big city. But it would be morally wrong for the county to remain on the sidelines at this historic junction. It would also be morally wrong for city voters to reject a deal, and possibly send the Chargers to L.A., because the rest of the county was not asked to pay a fair share of the NFL luxury tax.

Nick Canepa also followed the money in his column here. He wrote that AEG's initial demand for any team wishing to call downtown Los Angeles home is that it fork over 49 percent team ownership at half-price. Canepa added:

One would presume that’s negotiable, because no NFL owner in his right mind — and I’ve always found Chargers boss Dean Spanos to be of sound business mind and body — is going to buy that. Not when you understand the new CBA assures labor peace for 10 years and revenues and the value of franchises are expected to rise dramatically.

Footballphds.com picked up on these negotiations here, speculating that AEG and the Chargers are $90 million apart. The pertinent part of the post follows:

AEG has a valuation of $900 million on the Chargers in San Diego but they have a valuation of $1.2 billion on the Chargers in Los Angeles. This increased valuation has been one of AEG’s main selling points to the Chargers—with nothing more than a move, the Chargers can increase their value by 33%. But this valuation in Los Angeles has also been a source of discord in the negotiations. AEG is seeking a 30% equity stake in the Chargers. AEG would like to base its equity stake on a valuation of $900 million. Meanwhile, the Chargers would like to base the valuation on $1.2 billion. Accordingly, the two sides are currently $90 million apart in their negotiations.

A commenter on that page did the math another way. SD4life countered:

The Spanos family owns 100% of the team. 100% of the 900 million value in San Diego is greater than the 70% of 1.2 billion (=840 mil) in Los Angeles. Dean Spanos would be taking a pay cut to move to LA, something he won’t do if he can squeeze a new stadium out of San Diego. The Chargers have been loyal to San Diego in their search for a new stadium for 10 years, they will hold out extra year to get a sweet new stadium in downtown. Now all this is dependent on the city of San Diego making the 2012 ballot. If the city can secure that by early next year, the Chargers will hold out at least one more season to see how the voters vote. Fabiani is right, the city of San Diego has the edge for now, but it better get its act together now or Spanos and Leiweke will be shaking hands early next year.

On a side note, seeing something like this makes it seem tough to bet against AEG. The company's taking on business giant Ticketmaster and beginning to issue its own tickets to its entertainment events.

"Analysts said the venture could help bring some competition into an industry in which Ticketmaster accounts for about 70 percent of all ticket sales," the Denver Post reported.

The story continued: "Analysts have speculated that AEG may attempt to create an online TV network and cable channel featuring live shows from AEG-owned venues."

In other words, don't be surprised to read about Beyonce’s second baby bump on the AEG VMAs....

The news in Los Angeles

ESPN.com reporter Arash Markazi sat down for a recent talk with the Chargers stadium point person and began his piece about it: "Mark Fabiani loves Los Angeles." If the headline -- "Chargers treading water in San Diego" wasn't enough to suck you in, those first five words did the trick. How could you not read that?

Markazi's piece explored the ill will that has been simmering in San Diego for weeks between backers of a new Chargers stadium and the most staunch supporters of a convention center expansion. Fabiani hopes to combine the projects while convention center spokesman Steve Johnson has repeatedly scoffed at the prospect.

Markazi wrote here: "Whereas AEG wooed the L.A. Convention Center from the birth of its proposal and has been working hand-in-hand with it to make the partnership work (AEG actually chose the architect for the convention center expansion), Fabiani is essentially hoping for an arranged marriage against the San Diego Convention Center's will in order to make the football stadium seem less, well, like a football stadium to taxpayers."

But wait! There, on the mountaintop of National Football League insiders, is none other than Peter King! And what's he saying? That the Chargers are not looking like L.A.'s team?!

Sports Illustrated's King couldn't help but notice the war of words we wrote about last week between Fabiani and AEG's Tim Leiweke. He wrote here:

Interesting, to see the sniping between the two sides so many thought would eventually become partners. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Raiders take San Diego's place as the leader in the L.A. clubhouse, though Oakland has a sordid business history in southern California, and the Chargers have one thing the Raiders don't have: a quarterback (Philip Rivers) to put on billboards throughout Los Angeles.

Alright, so maybe that's not that reassuring to Chargers fans....

The big news in Los Angeles last week was the Friday hearing of the state Senate Select Committee on Sports and Entertainment in which AEG made it clear that they want protection from what they call "frivolous lawsuits" to forge ahead with their downtown Los Angeles stadium idea.

AEG officials began making comments even before the hearing that it might not be worth their while to keep going without the lawsuit protections. They say they will spend $50 million on design and environmental work, and they worry about getting tied up in litigation for years, delaying their project.

The idea of custom legislation requiring binding arbitration for one billionaire's project drew opposition from David Pettit, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Our view is we have a legal system for everybody in California," Pettit said. "Just because you are a rich stadium developer, you don't get your own legal system."

The group might be open to a bill that puts time limits on lawsuits in the court system, but he said a three-month limit is "unrealistic," given that the environmental study on the project is likely to be 10,000 pages.

Reuters had an interesting story here on the political pitfalls of backing a bill that would grant lawsuit protections to the downtown Los Angeles project. The article said there are two challenges facing Republican lawmakers in particular as they look to rally support for that legislation.

First, Republicans from rural districts are no fans of policies favoring Democratic Los Angeles. Second, San Diego-area Republicans may see the plan as a lure for the San Diego Chargers to move to Los Angeles.

Coverage of Friday's hearing

The paper reported here that a state analyst said at the hearing that the studies commissioned by the project's developer "likely overstated" the financial boost it would deliver.

Policy analyst Mark Whitaker warned that football stadiums typically have a minimal effect on a region's economic growth, largely because they become a magnet for household entertainment dollars that were already being spent elsewhere in the area.

In many cases, families that have bought tickets to events at the Home Depot Center in Carson, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and other local venues would probably shift those same dollars to the proposed Farmers Field in downtown Los Angeles, said Whitaker, who works in the Legislative Analyst's Office.

The Orange County Register's headline? Official warns that AEG deadline might not be met

The paper reported here that Sen. Kevin De Leon, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Sports and Entertainment, said AEG’s Sept. 9 deadline may not be met. That’s the last day for the Legislature to act on bills this session, although De Leon also said a special session could be called.

Each of these reports noted that John Semcken, an executive with Majestic Realty, which has proposed building an NFL stadium 22 miles outside Los Angeles in City of Industry, denied his company's intentions to sue.

"In over 70 years Majestic Realty has never sued a competitor and has no plans to sue a business partner," Semcken said in a statement. "We are 100 percent committed to returning the NFL to our region and have shown the league and the teams the tremendous economic upside of our project."

Meanwhile, the head of Majestic Realty may be waving a white flag over his project, which has been shovel-ready for months but hasn't been able to attract an NFL team. He, of course, would say he isn't.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported here that: "Developer Ed Roski Jr. has talked to Industry officials about the possibility of building retail stores instead of an NFL stadium on 600 acres of open space near the junction of the 57 and 60 freeways, Mayor Dave Perez said Thursday."

In other Los Angeles news, the L.A. Convention Center is losing business already because of construction fears. A gathering of 5,000 people set for February 2014 and organized by the Society of Critical Care Medicine has relocated to San Francisco, according to this story. (Have you even been to San Francisco in February? C'mon, guys, San Diego's beautiful that time of year....)

To wrap up the Los Angeles segment, this gem of a column from ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne.

She wrote that L.A. football fans are still looking for the apology they feel they're owed by the NFL for pulling up stakes after the 1994 season.

"We're definitely looking for an apology," she wrote. "But instead, we're about to be fixed up on blind dates with teams we've never met or cared much about, by a league that never officially told us why our previous partners divorced us in the first place. It's a lot to ask from a town that's still caught in the middle of Frank and Jamie McCourt's mess.

"On TV at least, this is how it always goes. The best couples fight, manipulate and sabotage each other every week. And yet somehow nobody goes to bed angry."

What's going on in other NFL cities?

Elsewhere in California, the violence that marred this month's 49ers-Raiders preseason game continues to reverberate. This report said that the Bay Area rivalry preseason games are now over and this column suggests that Raiders CEO Amy Trask is the last powerful person pushing a shared stadium for the two teams.

A columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle also wrote here about the 49ers' stadium plan. In his column, Al Saracevic chimed in on the stadium plan's "stark financial picture," saying:

The team insists it can build a new home next to its current headquarters, in Santa Clara, opening in 2015. But they have raised only a little over $250 million to spend on a project that will come close to $1 billion to build, if not more.

All this stadium talk in California has also piqued the interest of a few architects. Read their take and see more of those artists' renderings we all love (and some of us love to make fun of) here.

Over in Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton was lobbied by several people about a new stadium for the Vikings at the state fair Thursday. Minnesota Public Radio reported here that he got an "earful."

In St. Louis, a recent suggestion from St. Louis Magazine that the Rams were ripe for a move to L.A. sparked a media spat. Read the rebuttal here and the rebuttal to it here.

Turning to other NFL cities, Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers and the frozen tundra, will get a $143 million facelift without a nickel of public money (although the team may impose a one-time fee on season ticket holders.) The decision to remodel without asking taxpayers to help pay the tab is a shift from the team's $295.2 million makeover in 2003. Read about it here.

And the stadium where the New York Jets and Giants play is getting a new name, courtesy of MetLife and $400 million. Read about the 25-year naming-rights deal here, which is less than what Farmers Insurance would pay for the rights to advertise at the long-way-from-being-built Farmers Field in Los Angeles.

And what's this? Word that yet another team may be moving to Los Angeles? Read about the possibility here. Then read some speculation here that the same team might actually be moving to -- waitforit -- London.

In closing, this may hurt a little bit. Or maybe it'll help with your back-to-school shopping.

As always, let me know what you thought and what I missed.

And a quick programming note. I posted this Monday instead of last Friday because of my schedule. For that same reason, I will post the next installment the day after Labor Day.